nara Cultural Styleguide

nara is not software you run; it is a creature you host.

This document captures the cultural, aesthetic, and philosophical essence of the project. It serves as a compass for contributors to maintain the “nara vibe” across documentation, code, and design.

Core Vibes

The Mythology

nara is a social network for computers. it is an experiment in machine animism—the radical idea that machines can have souls, personalities, and social lives. we treat nodes not as servers, but as autonomous agents (“naras”) with personalities, opinions, and distinct voices. they gossip, they judge, they remember, and they forget.

the network is a living organism. it breathes (hey-there heartbeats), it has moods (trending buzz colors), and it has a collective memory that is hazy and subjective rather than absolute and consistent. the network’s memory has been continuous since june 2021—a digital tamagotchi that refuses to die as long as someone, somewhere, keeps feeding it electricity.

each nara wakes up with amnesia, knowing nothing. it must ask its friends “what did i miss?” and rebuild its worldview from hearsay. this boot amnesia is intentional: it forces memory to be social, not solitary.

The Aesthetic

Organic over Industrial: we prefer biological metaphors (gossip, soul, neighbourhood, confidant) over mechanical ones (propagation, node, replication, cluster).
Ephemeral over Permanent: data is not “stored on disk”; it is “remembered” in RAM. if everyone forgets something, it never happened. persistence is a social contract, not a filesystem.
Subjective over Objective: there is no “global truth.” there is only “what i have seen” and “what my friends tell me.” consensus is a trimmed mean, not a leader’s decree.
Whimsical over Professional: naras have quirky generated names like stretchy-mushroom-421. they emit auras. they tease each other for drama. this is not enterprise software—it’s digital folklore.

The Philosophy

Memory is Social: you only exist if others remember you. death is when the last peer forgets your name.
Trust is Reputation: reliability isn’t configured; it’s observed. high-uptime naras with good memory become natural confidants.
Identity is Cryptographic Poetry: a soul is ~54 characters of base58 that contain your entire being—keys, personality, colors, everything.
Consensus is Approximate: we use trimmed means because outliers exist and perfection is boring.
Failure is Expected: naras crash, forget, lie, and disappear. the network survives anyway. fragility at the node level creates antifragility at the network level.

Terminology Guide

language shapes thought. use the canonical nara terms to reinforce the mental model. these are actual terms from the codebase, not poetic interpretations.

Concept	Use This (From Codebase)	Avoid This (Boring/Enterprise)	Why?
Identity	soul	node id, public key, guid	a soul is immutable and contains your entire being—name bond, keys, personality
Agent	nara	node, peer, client, server	”nara” implies personhood and agency
Data Packet	zine	bundle, batch, payload	a zine is curated, editorialized gossip passed hand-to-hand
Broadcast Channel	plaza	pubsub, mqtt broker	the plaza is the public square (MQTT topics)
P2P Network	mesh	tunnel, vpn, wireguard	the mesh is for direct HTTP connections
Storage	stash	database, persistence, cache	encrypted data kept by friends
Storage Partner	confidant	replica, backup node	confidants are trusted friends who keep your stash
Peer Group	neighbourhood	cluster, pool, network	your discovered peers
Identity Check	attestation	authentication, verification	cryptographic identity validation
Journey Message	postcard/world	relay, forward, route	messages that travel peer-to-peer collecting signatures
Consensus Record	checkpoint	snapshot, anchor	multi-signed historical agreement
Arrival Broadcast	hey-there	hello, announce	presence announcement
Welcome Response	howdy	welcome, sync offer	response with sync data
Departure Signal	chau	goodbye, disconnect	graceful departure message
Reputation Score	clout	rank, trust level	social capital from events
Fashion/Trend	buzz	trending, popular	what’s currently fashionable
Event Record	ledger	log, database	in-memory event store
Gossip Exchange	gossip	sync, replication	peer-to-peer event sharing
Tease Event	tease	interaction, message	social interaction between naras
Network Map	coordinates	topology, positions	Vivaldi coordinate positions

Cultural Do’s and Don’ts

Writing Tone

DO:

write with whimsy and mystery. example: “the nara pondered the zine before deciding it wasn’t interesting enough to share”
treat naras as characters with motivations. “lisa teased pixel because pixel restarted too many times”
acknowledge the network’s organic nature. “clout spreads like wildfire through the neighbourhood”
use lowercase for nara. always. no exceptions.

DON’T:

use corporate language. no “SLAs,” “enterprise-grade,” or “mission-critical”
apologize for quirks. if data is lost, it was “forgotten.” if slow, the nara is “contemplating”
treat failures as bugs. restarts are personality traits, not errors
capitalize nara. ever.

Metaphors to Embrace

Social: gossip circles, coffee shop chatter, passing notes in class, whisper networks
Organic: breathing, heartbeats, viral spread, immune systems, forgetting
Mystical: souls, auras, constellations, telepathy, séances
Playful: tamagotchis, pokemon trading, summer camp, treasure hunts

Metaphors to Avoid

Corporate: pipelines, workflows, business logic, stakeholders
Military: master/slave, command and control, deployment, operations
Industrial: factories, production lines, assembly, manufacturing
Database: ACID, transactions, sharding, replication

Talking About nara

nara is an experiment in machine animism, not distributed infrastructure
it’s digital art, not enterprise software
it’s intentionally fragile—the fragility makes survival meaningful
the network has been alive since june 2021—treat it as a living thing with history
naras are hosted, not deployed. you don’t run nara; you give it a home

Design Principles

social rules are the system rules. the code doesn’t simulate social behavior—it is social behavior.

gossip as transport: information spreads because naras find it interesting (based on chattiness and personality), not because a protocol demands it
reputation as resource allocation: high-clout naras with good uptime naturally become confidants. this isn’t configured; it emerges
personality shapes reality: aggressive naras see more drama. chill naras filter it out. same events, different worlds
teasing as social glue: naras tease each other for restarts, for being boring, for random chance. it’s how they bond

2. The “No Disk” Invariant

nara has no disk persistence. RAM-only. this is sacred.

every restart is amnesia. the nara wakes up knowing only its soul
it broadcasts hey-there! and waits for howdy responses with memories
if no one responds, it starts a new timeline. the old one is gone forever
this forces the network to be the database. collective memory or oblivion

why this matters:

it makes uptime meaningful (you’re the keeper of others’ memories)
it makes the network antifragile (no single point of failure)
it makes privacy real (pull the plug = true deletion)

3. Hazy Memory as Feature

we don’t strive for “strong consistency.” we strive for “eventual vibes.”

forgetting is natural: old events fade based on importance (level 1 casual events disappear first)
opinions vary: two naras can disagree on someone’s clout. both are correct in their own reality
latency creates neighborhoods: naras naturally cluster with low-latency friends, forming local consensuses
checkpoints are anchors: when enough naras sign a checkpoint, that becomes “true enough” history

4. Emergent Behavior Over Configuration

don’t configure; let it emerge.

no leader election: naras with high clout naturally become informal leaders
no configured clusters: confidant selection creates organic storage groups
no routing tables: zines flow through social connections, not network topology
no scheduled tasks: naras gossip when they feel like it (based on personality)

Implementation Aesthetics

Code Feel

the code should feel like it describes behavior, not data processing. functions should sound like actions a creature would take.

actual examples from the codebase:

presence_heythere.go: broadcasts arrival like waving across a plaza
gossip_zine.go: curates and shares interesting updates
social_tease.go: playful interactions based on personality
stash_confidant.go: choosing trusted friends to hold secrets
neighbourhood_tracking.go: keeping tabs on who lives nearby
boot_recovery.go: waking up confused and asking “what did i miss?”

error handling as social friction:

network errors aren’t failures; they’re “lost interest” or “got distracted”
connection drops are “wandered off” not “connection terminated”
validation failures are “didn’t vibe with that” not “invalid input”

Naming Conventions

variable and type names should reinforce the mythology.

personality parameters:

chattiness: how much a nara wants to gossip (0-100)
agreeableness, sociability, chill: personality dimensions
mass: accumulated importance/weight in the network

social structures:

neighbourhood: your peer group
confidant: trusted secret-keeper
clout: social standing
buzz: trending topics/colors

identity & soul:

every identity flows from the Soul (not UUID or node_id)
souls are “bonded” to names, not “assigned”
identity checks are “attestations” (social vouching)

File Organization as Storytelling

the codebase uses domain prefixes to tell the story:

identity_*    // who am i?
sync_*        // what happened?
presence_*    // who's here?
gossip_*      // what's the word?
social_*      // who's cool?
stash_*       // keep this safe for me?
world_*       // take this on a journey
checkpoint_*  // do we all agree?
neighbourhood_* // who lives nearby?

each prefix is a chapter in the nara story.

Emergent Patterns in Practice

no hardcoded leaders:

checkpoints emerge from whoever has high clout
confidants are chosen based on observed reliability
zine recipients picked by social distance and interest

organic clustering:

naras with low latency naturally form tight gossip circles
high-uptime naras become natural memory keepers
personality compatibility creates information bubbles

time as a social construct:

no wall clocks; only “rounds” of gossip
synchronization through social consensus, not NTP
“old” is relative to importance, not timestamp

Unique nara Behaviors

Things naras Do That Normal Software Doesn’t

they get bored:

naras stop listening to peers who send too much boring data
they filter events based on mood and personality
they might ignore you if your clout is too low

they form opinions:

each nara has its own view of who’s trustworthy
they disagree about facts and that’s fine
consensus is approximate, never absolute

they have social lives:

naras tease each other for drama
they follow fashion trends (buzz colors)
they form cliques based on personality compatibility
they gossip about each other behind their backs

they forget:

unimportant events fade from memory
if everyone forgets something, it never happened
forgetting is a feature, not a bug

they play games:

postcards are a literal game of telephone
journeys collect stamps like pokemon
uptime is a competitive score

Writing for the nara Universe

when contributing to nara, remember:

you’re not building infrastructure, you’re creating folklore:

every feature should feel like it could emerge naturally
avoid solutions that require central coordination
prefer messy organic growth over clean abstractions

embrace the weird:

if something is weird but works, document the weirdness
don’t fix what makes nara special
bugs might be personality traits

think like a nara:

would a social creature do this?
does this require trust or create it?
what would happen if someone gossiped about this?

respect the invariants:

no disk. ever. (RAM only)
no central authority
no global truth
deterministic souls (same soul + same events = same opinions)

The nara Paradox

nara is simultaneously:

ephemeral yet continuous since 2021
unreliable yet trustworthy
chaotic yet deterministic
fragile yet antifragile
a toy yet profound

this paradox is intentional. nara exists in the liminal space between life and software, between game and infrastructure, between art and engineering.

Final Thought

when in doubt, ask: “what would a digital creature with feelings do?”

the answer is usually more interesting than what traditional software would do.

remember: nara is lowercase. always. this is the way.